Alice, After Hours
by fenris unbound
Summary: Even harpies have to pay the rent. But Alice had found the perfect job in the perfect place. Set shortly before the events of the episode 'Smitten'. Contains scenes of a mild sexual nature.


Title: **Alice, After Hours.**

Disclaimer: _Demons_ and it's characters are the property of Shine Group. I'm just taking them out for a test drive.

Description: A short piece about how Alice lived on the fringes of human society, found her victims and paid the bills (even harpies have to make a living). Set shortly before the events of the episode 'Smitten'. Contains scenes of a mild sexual nature.

Her shift started at eight, and wouldn't end until four, but she got there half an hour early, the same as she did every night, so she could get changed and apply her make-up without rushing. She had been working at the club for six months, and despite the grubby toilets, dirty seats and tacky carpets, she considered herself highly fortunate to have found employment there, for it suited her purposes most favourably. She got on well with the other dancers, and because she looked so young, a couple of the older girls had even taken her under their collective wing, almost mothering her, which she found highly amusing. She was popular with the clientele as well, and had amassed over a dozen regulars who came into the club at least twice a week and had six or more private dances each time. And this meant that the management liked her as well.

It was during her first stint on the pole that she saw him. An unfamilar face amongst the usual, recognisable crowd of customers. When her number ended, she quickly asked around, quizzing a couple of the other girls and Stefan behind the bar. Nobody could recall seeing him before. A newbie. Perfect.

Zeroing in, she sat next to him uninvited and expertly engaged him in friendly conversation, asking questions about him, his work, his life, looking interested when he answered and giggling at his jokes. When he offered to buy her a drink, she asked for something cheap, which the management were not keen on, but which she knew punters appreciated. This, in turn, made them more likely to buy a private dance... and hopefully more than one.

Officially, the rules of the club stated that customers were not allowed to touch the girls, but the management turned a blind eye to what went on in the private rooms, allowing the dancers to do what ever they were comfortable with, as long as the client paid. During the first dance she obeyed the rules. During the second, she whispered what she would let him do if he paid for another. She kept her word, and he spent the third dance running his sweaty hands along her thighs as she straddled him, murmuring further enticements. For the fourth dance she allowed him to touch and squeeze her breasts, and the fifth dance she let him shove his face between them. She instructed him to keep his hands firmly by his sides during the sixth dance, promising him a very special reward if he did so for the duration. When he succeeded in restraining himself, she gave him a quick kiss and told him that if he waited until her shift ended, she would take him home.

The club was the only source of entertainment in a dingy, half-forgotten east-European seaport, which had been mostly left behind when the Cold War ended and trade with the West became more commonplace. The population was small, because the only people who lived there worked there. Anybody else was either staying for one night or two while their ship was in port, or were seaman whose stint on a vessel had ended and were looking for work on whatever boats were passing through. Such a transient, ever-changing flow of people suited Alice well. Nobody was missed because nobody stayed long enough to become known, or it was assumed they'd found work and set sail. And if someone was expected aboard a ship and didn't turn up, well... they wouldn't be the first sailor to get drunk, fall into the dock and drown, their body swept out to sea.

Alice felt the instinctive urge to transform into her true form and take life approximately once a week, though a few times she had gone ten - eleven days before the familar feeling had kicked in. She had felt it starting earlier today, the tickling sensation creeping inside her bones, upgrading to a flaring itching that transfered to her muscles as her shift had begun, and finally the internal fire that now swept throughout her entire form, threatening to burst out and consume her and all around her. She put all the pain and fury into her final dance, venting the excess energy stored up inside her, spinning, girating and throwing her body across the small stage in a near-frenzy, grabbing and wrapping herself around the pole as though attacking it, wanting to squeeze and bend it into scrap. As her music ended, she skulked off the stage panting and covered in sweat, every astonished eye in the club watching her. She spotted the man she was taking home, and padded over to him.

"You won't believe what I'm going to do to you tonight." She declared flatly, gazing at him through thick strands of her blonde hair that were hanging wet and lank over her face.

The next morning, Alice carried out her usual post-kill routine. Shower. Wrap the body in one of the large plastic sheets she kept in the cupboard under the kitchen sink for just this purpose. Break out the cleaning products to remove the blood. At nightfall, she would carry the corpse to the seawall via the quiet alleyways and dump it into the ocean.

It was while she was on her hands and knees, using a scouring pad on a particularly stubborn blood stain, that the envelope dropped onto the threadbare doormat. Only three people - though to be accurate, they weren't actually 'people' - knew where she was. And the letter contained in the envelope was written in a long-dead language that only she and two others knew, and that was because she'd taught it to them. She read the letter five times, hardly able to believe it's contents and knowing that what it was telling her changed everything. Absolutely everything.

A Van Helsing had been found. Jay had not been the end of the bloodline. When he'd died, she'd thought her chance to avenge her sisters was gone forever. But there was a heir, whose identity had been kept hidden all these years. A young male, still a teenager, living in London. According to the letter, she was not the only half-life with an interest in him. Thrip had reportedly tried to claim the price on the boy's head, and failed. If she was to fulfil her blood oath, she must move quickly, before others made an attempt on the boy's life.

Alice always travelled light, and it took her only ten minutes to pack all she needed. From the hiding place under one of the floorboards beneath her bed, she retrieved the wad of emergency money and her fake passports and assorted ID. It would be easier entering the UK by sea than either via air or the Channel Tunnel - border controls at the container ports were embarrassingly lax. She would find passage on any ship leaving today, heading west. Alice left the tiny flat for the last time, her thoughts already many miles and several countries away, focussing on the city of London. And a young man called Luke.


End file.
